April Break at Home 2021
Featuring Mika Rottenberg’s Spaghetti Blockchain
April 12–16
For April Break 2021, dive into Mika Rottenberg’s Spaghetti Blockchain with us! From April 12–16, join us for some exclusive online programming all about Mika Rottenberg and the fascinating sights and sounds of her film Spaghetti Blockchain, 2019.
This programme is open to all but is especially geared towards families with kids from Grades 4-7.
How to Participate
Day 1
Watch Spaghetti Blockchain below and use the guiding questions below to spark a conversation, or get thinking about the work.
Day 2
Have questions for the artist? “Ask Mika” by submitting your questions on Instagram! Also learn all about CERN, where Mika visited and filmed part of Spaghetti Blockchain.
Day 3
Raid your recycling bin and make sculpture art with Naz Rahbar! Follow along with the recorded workshop from our April TD Community Sunday.
Day 5
Try your hand at making Oobleck, a non-Newtonian fluid, with the Ontario Science Centre. Like Mika, you’ll start to think about matter and material in a whole new way. Learn more here!
With thanks to the webteam at MCA Chicago.
This version of Spaghetti Blockchain featured descriptive captioning, which presents on-screen captions reflecting the noises made in the work.
Guiding Questions
- The title of the work combines two very different words together – “spaghetti” and “blockchain.” Why do you think Mika chose this for the title? What is a blockchain, and why might help explain what we are viewing in the film?
- If you were to tell a friend about this work, how would you describe it? How does it make you feel?
- The work begins with a Tuvan throat singer, who creates a striking and powerful sound that carries through the entire film. What might this sound signify, as we hear it play over scenes of a hexagonal tunnel rotating, potatoes being farmed, and mechanisms moving. Why do you think Mika chose this sound to bind these different scenes together?
- The scenes of wires, cables, and scientific machinery were filmed at CERN, a nuclear research facility in Switzerland. Mika visited CERN in 2018 as part of their Guest Artists Programme. Why do you think a scientific research facility would invite artists to research and work alongside the scientists?
- Mika is fascinated by our relationship to matter and the different ways we can interact with it. Can you think of some scenes from the film that illustrate matter changing from one state to another?
- If you could ask Mika Rottenberg a question about this work, what would you ask?
You may know CERN as the European Organization for Nuclear Research, but did you know that they have a programme dedicated to supporting artists and artist research? It’s called Arts at CERN, and Mika Rottenberg visited as part of their Guest Artist programme in 2018, where she filmed some of the footage that you see in Spaghetti Blockchain.
According to CERN, “The Arts at CERN programme fosters connection between science and arts by extending artistic practice and creating a space for artists to partner with physicists and engineers. Together, they are given the opportunity to explore different approaches to curiosity and creativity.”
Learn more about Mika’s time at CERN, and about the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator. Then, check out this virtual tour of the LHC, and see what Mika might have seen during her visit to CERN!
Making a sculpture out of found and recycled materials can have endless possibilities! This month we welcomed Naz Rahbar to lead a virtual workshop for our April TD Community Sunday. During the workshop, Naz showed us how to use recycled boxes, tubes, and other materials to make a mini sculpture room, or diorama. This activity got us thinking about our relationship to matter and materials, similar to Mika Rottenberg in her exhibition Spaghetti Blockchain.
You can watch the full workshop recording below:
In many of her films, Mika explores materialism and the different ways we can interact with matter. When we handle an object or material, it will behave based on its state of matter—solid, liquid, or gas. But what if a material acted like two different states of matter at the same time?
In this activity from the Ontario Science Centre, try your hand at creating Oobleck, a fascinating material that acts like both a solid and a liquid at the same time!
